What if We Got Angry Every Time and Not Just At the Random Times?

It’s happened to almost all of us. It’s probably happened to you. You get pulled over, wondering why, only to have a cop issue a ticket for something completely bogus or at the very least completely harmless. You see your ticket for $150 as robbery. It’s pay up or risk being beaten, tazed and caged. So you pay. Before you pay, while you are paying, and sometimes for years later; you are reminded of this day on the side of the road and you become angry. You complain to your friends and they become angry with you. “That’s bullshit” you all agree. It’s robbery. They are just trying to pay for their wages with that money. You remember thinking about fighting it in court but you realize that it would cost you as much in time off work to fight it as paying the ticket. That makes you angry too.

This next thing hasn’t happened to most of us but it is infuriating enough, that just reading about it can make you angry. The story goes; somebody was driving down the street with a wad of cash in their pocket. It doesn’t matter where the cash came from, it’s theirs. This somebody gets pulled over for something stupid and they get searched. The cops find the wad of cash and steal it. The cops don’t have to charge the somebody with a crime or prove the money had anything to do with a crime. Getting the money back can cost 10s of thousands of dollars. The state calls it civil asset forfeiture, but it’s theft to the eyes of anyone who is awake. You hear these stories and you become angry. “How can they just steal people’s money like that with no charges and no trial?” “That’s bullshit.”

You don’t even have to be a Voluntaryist to be angry at these situations. They are infuriating to anyone who faces them or who is paying attention. What strikes me as interesting is how we all get robbed every time we earn a dollar at our jobs or in businesses; every time we go into a store and buy something; and twice a year when the local government issues a threat letter telling us if we don’t pay them, they will kick us out of our homes at the point of a gun and they will auction them off for pennies on the dollar—yet we don’t get angry at this. We get a little pissed off during tax season when we have to reconcile all of our data with the state to make sure they stole the amount they planned to steal. Most of that anger is at the cumbersome process though and not at the theft itself.

Imagine a world where everyone got angry at the state, every time the state took money from them by force. There you are in the checkout line, at your favorite store, cursing the state out loud as you look at your receipt. The guy behind you is curious why you are mad, so you show him your receipt and he curses the state, “that’s bullshit” the two of you agree. The property theft bill comes in the mail and you and yours get angry together and you call your friends who are also angry. You curse the state together and post online how you were stolen from only to find all your friends were too. “That’s bullshit” you all agree. Management hands out the paychecks at work, and there is a roar in the crowd as people open them. People start yelling out about the thieving sons of bitches who stole money right out of their checks. Management chimes in and points out they stole some from them just for paying the employees. There is a 30 minute hate fest against the state that includes both management and the employees.

Imagine that there are 7 billion angry people every day who all see the state as an evil thief or who at least feel like it’s not right that they should have to pay or have violence brought down upon them. How long could statism survive such a constant and global anger?

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